I can never understand why the states were willing to ratify the 17th Amendment, when it so clearly meant a massive decrease in their own power.
The nation enjoyed accelerating wealth, yet farmers were stuck with debt, low agricultural prices and no inflation to relieve them. There was jealousy of the Carnegies, Rockefellers, etc. Depression in mid-1890s. Haymarket riots. Charles A. Beard's book that slammed the characters of our framing generation. William Jennings Bryan and fellow demagogues. Woodrow Wilson.
Apparently left out of the conversation was why the senate was structured as it was in 1787.